Kensington is safer than the borough around it, and most of its crime goes after possessions. Recorded crime runs about a fifth below the Kensington and Chelsea rate. Violence makes up a smaller share of it than it does nationally. Theft from the person makes up a much bigger share. In Kensington the person at risk is whoever is careless with a phone.
The Metropolitan Police's published figures give Kensington a crime rate of about 147 offences per 1,000 residents for the year from June 2025 to May 2026, with 3,384 crimes recorded in that time. That rate is roughly 19% below the borough average. It isn't a quiet suburb's number. For somewhere this central, though, it is lower than people tend to expect.
Across the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea as a whole, the rate over the same twelve months was about 183 per 1,000, against Kensington's 147. The borough has busier, rougher corners than Kensington, and Kensington comes out ahead of them.
Kensington houses about 15,600 people per square kilometre, which is a crowded place by any measure. Unemployment is 3% and about 6% of households are overcrowded. None of those figures explains the crime rate. They describe a packed, busy, mostly comfortable neighbourhood where plenty of people pass through, and that kind of footfall shapes the crime figures more than poverty does.
The mix is what sets Kensington apart. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault with no injury, make up about 21% of crime here against about 35% across England and Wales. That is well under the national share, even though it is still the biggest single category. Anti-social behaviour is 19% against 16% nationally, close to the norm. The gaps open up in theft. Other theft is 13% against 7%, shoplifting 10% against 8%, vehicle crime 9% against 5%, and theft from the person 7% against 2%. In Kensington crime goes after phones, bags, shop stock and cars, and much less often after anyone's face.
When a crime is reported, the Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally. That ranks it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of its cases close with nobody identified. These are force-wide figures for the whole of the Met's area, and they show what happens after a crime, which is separate from how likely one is in the first place. If your phone does go, the force's own record makes a charge the less likely outcome.
Kensington is a safe place to live by any reasonable standard and safer than its own borough. The risk here is mostly to whatever you carry or park, and much less to you.